So the next day they sailed out of sight of Hispaniola, and “haled off for Virginia.” Coming to the “Island Caycos” Ferdinando told of two good salt ponds here. Accordingly a landing was made, and the better part of a day spent in roaming about this isle: some of the company seeking the salt ponds which they did not find; others fowling; others hunting swans, “whereof we caught many.” The next land sighted was the Carolina coast. On July sixteenth they fell with the “main of Virginia.” Ferdinando took it to be the island of Croatoan, and came to anchor. But after riding here for two or three days he found out his mistake. Then setting sail again he bore farther along the coast. The following night “had not Captaine Stafford bene more carefull in looking out than our Simon Ferdinando, we had bene all cast away upon the beach called the Cape of Feare, for we were come within two cables length of it: such was the carelesnes and ignorance of our Master.”
On the twenty-second of July the ships were safe arrived at Hastorask.
Immediately upon their arrival Governor White with forty of his best men went aboard the pinnace to pass up to Roanoke Island forthwith and seek the fifteen men left by Grenville. When they had been met, as he confidently expected they would be, and after a conference with them as to the state of affairs, he was to return, and the fleet were without further delay to sail up the coast to the Chesapeake Bay country. But as soon as the pinnace with his party had put off from the admiral Ferdinando caused one of his chief men to call out to her sailors not to bring the party back from Roanoke Island, but to leave them there, all except the governor, “and two or three such as he approved”: for the summer was far spent, and therefore Ferdinando would “land the planters in no other place.” Since it appeared that all the sailors both in the pinnace and on board the admiral were in agreement with Ferdinando’s decision, it “booted not the governour to contend with them.” Accordingly he proceeded to Roanoke and made preparations there for the temporary accommodation at least of his colonists.
The island was reached at sunset and White and his companions landed at the point where he understood that Grenville’s fifteen men had established themselves. Not one was found. But the discovery of the bones of one of them led the searchers to fear that all had perished at the hands of the Indians. The next morning White with several of his party walked up to the Old Colony’s plantation at the north end of the island, hoping there to find some trace of the missing men. The place was deserted. The fort had been razed, and its site was overgrown with vines. The “decent dwelling houses” of the colony yet stood, but they were open to the weather, and, like the site of the fort, overgrown with vines, and within them deer were feeding. With this melancholic spectacle the governor’s party returned “without hope of ever seeing any of the fifteene men living.”